


The Breach

by PermanentlyChilled (orphan_account)



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Dark!Dirk - Freeform, Eventual Happy Ending, Gen, Guns, Heavy Angst, Loneliness, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Time Skips, found family (not always the lovely kind)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-16
Updated: 2020-02-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22760707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/PermanentlyChilled
Summary: Four alternate timelines, diverging at Dirk's escape from Blackwing. 'Rescued' by the Rowdies, tagging along with Bart, recapture and the escape that stuck. MCD tag relates to the third possible timeline.Abandoned; fic hasn't been written in its entirety but incomplete parts are still outlined within the text.
Relationships: Bart Curlish & Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently & Scott Riggins, Dirk Gently & The Rowdy 3, Todd Brotzman & Dirk Gently
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18





	The Breach

**Author's Note:**

> A note about these incomplete stories:
> 
> Obviously these are rarely gonna be indicative of my best writing- though I might clean them up slightly before posting they won't have had the same rigorous editing as my main fics, and several of them may date back a few years to before my writing skill/understanding of the characters had properly developed.
> 
> I welcome comments, obviously- who doesn't?- but please none of the pushy 'finish this!' variety- we've already established that's probably not gonna happen. The nice thing about keeping these fics, of course, is I CAN revisit them in future if the mood takes me, but the main point of this exercise is to draw a line under them and make room for new things in my head. I will probably not pick these stories up again; if, however, YOU would like to, go right ahead, write to your heart's content! I'd quite like to see it if you end up finishing what I started ^^
> 
> Fics are presented as the entirety of what I had written when I abandoned them- which includes plans/outlines for the rest of the fic as I would have written it, if I made such plans. These outline sections will be depicted in bold and italic font.
> 
> This is one of the angstiest things I ever started writing- unsurprising that I never finished it lmao. Enjoy <3

**Scenario One: Sad Jelly**

**2001**

They came from nowhere, the men- although a couple of them were closer to boys, like him. They crashed through his cell door and rounded on him like a pack of starving wolves.

And then they... They _took_ something.

He wasn't sure what it was. Only that it came pouring out of him in crackly blue waves and directly into their mouths and eyes and other bits of their faces that people weren't supposed to drink through. It was weird, though. He could feel his panic disappear with it, like they were drinking it straight from his head. But they weren't _replacing_ it with anything and he just felt... Empty. Not in a bad way maybe, but...

And then they stopped, and the blue was gone and so was the panic and fear and his chest was an empty pit.

They howled, and laughed and roared to the skies, and one by one ran off, a new spring in each of their steps. And they left him there.

Or at least, the big ones did.

The small one looked at him a moment, grin manic, toes and fingers twitching, energy humming beneath the surface.

And then he grabbed his hand.

"C'mon, yummy!" He squeaked, dragging him to his feet. "We're gonna blow this joint!"

He had no energy left to argue.

* * *

Their names came to him in drips and drabs, no one of them accustomed to talking after so long in separate cells. He got the feeling they only really needed to talk for him, anyway- they all always seemed to know exactly what the others were thinking. It was pretty cool, but also scary. He wondered if they ever talked about him.

But the one who took to talking the fastest was Vogel.

He was small, smaller than Svlad. Definitely younger. He had a round face and brown eyes and a thousand-megawatt grin, and too much restless energy to fit inside his tiny body. He laughed at everything, never walked when he could run or somersault, and climbed over the other three like a jungle gym. None of them seemed to mind.

Next was Cross. He was the tallest. And when a week after the escape he got a face tattoo done by one of the others that got all red and swollen for a bit he was also briefly the ugliest. But he recovered, and the tattoo was actually pretty cool, and it turned out that he was, too. He was crazy, obviously- they all were. But it was kind of a happy crazy. The kind of crazy that made him pull funny faces and laugh at stupid things- and yes, occasionally smash cans, bottles and even _bricks_ on his forehead.

Then one day Svlad tore his shirt, and Gripps came to repair it. He was just as crazy as Cross, but he was a little more subtle about it. His meaty fingers were surprisingly dextrous, he had Svlad's shirt patched up in minutes. And then he petted Svlad's hair, picked up his trembling hands and painted his nails with clumpy lemon yellow polish. Weirdly, Svlad started to feel more at ease with him than with any of the others. He had some kind of understanding, some kind of parental instinct. He wondered if maybe he'd had a family, before Blackwing. Wondered if he wanted to find them.

And finally, there was Martin. He was just as anarchic as the rest of them but there was something else about him- some sense of calm and control that the others just didn't have. Somehow being around him always filled Svlad with a crackling sense of tension, like the charged calm before a storm.

Svlad spent so long trying to scrape together his rescuers' names that he didn't even realize he'd never given them his.

* * *

"So," Martin drawled one day, exhaling a thick puff of smoke into the desert air as Cross and Gripps unpacked the van for the night. "What'd they call you before you were Icarus?"

Dirk started, as he always did whenever Martin directly addressed him, and shuffled his feet. "Oh, uh- Svlad. Svlad Cjelli."

He squeaked nervously as a pair of hands fell on his shoulders, Vogel having ambushed him from behind. "Sad Jelly? Weird name!"

"No, no it's pronounced like-"

"Guys!" Vogel bellowed, Svlad's protests falling on deaf ears. "He has a name! It's Sad Jelly!"

"Jelly!" Cross cheered with goofy smile. "Yum!"

Svlad sighed, burying his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders. It did absolutely nothing to dislodge Vogel, but it made him feel better. Smaller.

Another hand, this one on his head, took him by surprise. He jolted and looked up.

Martin peered down at him through his cracked red glasses. They were pretty new, Svlad was pretty sure he didn’t actually need them to see- maybe he just liked the look of them. It was oddly comforting, actually. To think of Martin making decisions like that. Just ‘cause. He cocked his head and moved his hand, ruffling Svlad’s hair lightly.

“Welcome aboard, Jelly,” he rumbled.

He patted his head once, and stalked off to help Gripps and Cross with the unloading.

Vogel threw his arms around Svlad’s shoulders, squeezing him tight. “See?! You’re one of us, now, Jelly!”

Svlad highly doubted it. He suspected that these people, these… _vampires_ just felt sorry for him.

But he reached up and put his hands on Vogel’s arms, anyway.

It was nice. Just to be held a moment.

* * *

_**Though they have sympathy for him because he’s young and scared, they also don’t understand him. They all grow to love each other, in a dysfunctional family sort of way, but Dirk’s gentle nature doesn’t really mesh with them and their destructive tendencies often give him panic attacks. He stays with them and grows dependant on them as his surrogate family, and is never alone again- although always lonely.** _

_**Present day: Dirk is Jelly, black leather jacket sprayed yellow, hanging back as the Rowdies wreak havoc, carefully quashing his panic like he always does for his family. Vogel gives him a shiny thing he found in the mess, and he decides that it could definitely be worse.** _

* * *

**Scenario Two: Svlad Cjelli**

**2001**

He ran as fast as he could, and then faster. His legs screamed and his lungs burned, but he couldn’t afford to stop- this was his only chance.

He made it two cell blocks before his fateful misstep.

His ankle gave, he hurtled to the ground, barely reaching out to catch himself in time. His hands stung where they’d dragged and scraped on the cold cement, his knee was jarred. He could hear footsteps behind him. He had to get up, before they-

“Project Marzanna is loose, I repeat: _Project Marzanna is loose!”_

“Find her, take her out- don’t try to recapture her, she’s too- _argh!”_

The voice trailed off into wet gurgle, and he heard the sound of something heavy and limp sagging to the ground. Another strangled yell followed, and a spatter of blood shot out from behind him and speckled the floor beneath his hands. He whipped his head around, terrified of what he might find.

The girl stood over the bodies of the two guards, swaying as though caught in a light breeze, blood staining her hands and mouth.

They made eye contact.

She narrowed her eyes at him. Like the doctors did when they were studying him. She didn’t break eye contact as she opened her mouth and spat something out. The ear landed with a thin splatter of blood, about three feet from the guard who was probably too dead to miss it.

She nodded. Once, sharply, towards the exit he’d been running to. And then she started walking.

Not knowing what else to do, he followed her.

She didn’t seem to mind.

* * *

Marzanna’s proper name was Bart. She just shrugged when he said he thought that was a boy’s name. She didn’t bite his ear off, though, so she must like him. She was the same age as him- about eighteen, at their nearest guess. She’d been in Blackwing a couple of months longer, though. Her voice sounded like tyres on gravel and her hair was permanently tangled.

She also saw things like he saw them. The little threads connecting the universe, tying anything and everything into one cohesive whole of cause and effect.

Except that when she saw a bad thread, one that strangled and drained everything it connected, she snipped it.

He found out that those guards she killed hadn’t been the first. Not many people got assigned to her in Blackwing, they all had a habit of turning up dead. Even as a child, she said, people seemed to drop dead in her proximity. Accidents, mostly. But they weren’t accidents- everything was connected, and Bart was the common thread.

 _He_ wasn’t dead though. Which seemed as good a sign as any that he was supposed to be with her.

The killing, though, was a problem.

“You don’t _have_ to, you know,” he pleaded, watching wide-eyed as she held the man pinned with a knife at his throat. “He’s sorry!”

She just looked at him, with an expression of disinterest, and shrugged. “Sorry, Svlad,” she rasped. “I don’t make the rules.”

And just like that, she slit the man’s throat.

* * *

It occurred to him many, many times that he should leave her.

He could feel the tug in the back of his mind, the pull of the universe telling him that he had places to be, places that weren’t here. And Bart was… she was unstoppable, a force of nature. She killed who she wanted, and it was never the wrong person. She was blood and death and cruel justice incarnate.

She was also the sister he’d never had.

He learned a lot of things about Bart in the time they travelled together. She didn’t say much at first, not about her past- she said plenty of stuff about the present, it was as if she needed to vocalise her thoughts to know she was thinking them. But they grew so comfortable with one another that secrets started spilling between them. He found out that Bart once had a sister and a mother. A father, too, but he was the first of many to not survive the Bart Curlish curse. He found out that she loved cats, but they always ran away from her. He found out that she was funny- she didn’t always understand jokes, but when you explained them she laughed for hours, and as her confidence grew she started to make her own, too. He found out that she didn’t like people touching her. Well, most people. One night, when he was shaken awake by a nightmare of dark rooms and electric shocks, she climbed into the sleeping bag behind him and wrapped her arms round his skinny body tentatively, like she wasn’t sure how. It was scary, but comforting. He took her calloused hand in his and slept like a baby.

So he stayed, because he liked Bart and felt warm and safe in her company.

But Bart was Bart, and the killings continued. Everywhere they went she left a trail of bloodshed. No one ever caught up to them, though. The universe wouldn’t let them. Sometimes Svlad wished they would, so the killing would stop. But they wouldn’t, and he couldn’t stop her. Bart was a fundamental element of reality and he could do nothing.

But every time she spilled blood in front of him, he felt sick to his stomach. The screams and hollow eyes of her kills haunted his dreams, long after she’d moved on to her next victim.

So really, he had two choices. Either he could leave her behind, thus leaving behind the safety and warmth of her company and protection. Or he could stop caring what she did.

Years passed, and he was still no closer to deciding.

* * *

They were twenty-three. Ish. Neither of them could remember exactly when they’d started this. Or even exactly when their birthdays were.

They sat together on the roof of the rusty Chevy, close but not touching, eyes turned to the sky. They’d driven so far out into the desert that they could see every single star. Svlad had no idea where they were, or where they were going, but he knew better than to ask Bart- she wouldn’t know, either. That was the beauty of it.

“You wanna leave.”

He started, turning to look at her. She was watching him impassively, or attempting to. But he thought he caught a glimpse of something behind her eyes. “What? No, I-“

“It’s fine, Svlad,” she grunted, looking away again. “You don’t like the murders. I get that. But I ain’t gonna stop, I can’t. If I stop, the universe breaks, it’s pretty simple.”

“I know,” Svlad said sadly, still watching her even if she wouldn’t look him in the eye.

She grunted again, hands tapping an off-beat rhythm on her stomach. “Well… I guess, next town we find, you can… go. Somewhere.”

She looked at him again then, and there was definitely something in her eyes this time. “I think… I’m gonna miss you.”

She lifted one hand off her stomach and laid it on the hood between them, palm up.

Svlad swallowed, nodded, and carefully laid his hand on top of hers.

She squeezed, callouses on her fingers rasping against his smoother skin, and turned her face back to the stars. Svlad did the same. The sky was truly endless out this far in the middle of nowhere. He’d never felt smaller or more insignificant.

But Bart… she couldn’t feel that way. It was impossible. She was a constant in the universe, even if she only operated in the tiniest corner of it. Wherever she went, that’s where she was supposed to be. Whoever she killed, that’s who was supposed to die. Svlad knew he felt something similar- he always used to go along with the whims of the universe, and his hunches always led him somewhere- but he didn’t just… _know_ it, the way she did. For her, there was truly no alternative. She wouldn’t, couldn’t go against her path. She’d sooner die. She’d sooner give up the closest thing to a brother she’d ever had.

He wasn’t sure he wanted her to give him up.

“I don’t…” he said softly, squeezing back. “Have to leave.”

She looked at him, eyes wide. He swallowed, nodding slightly. “I can…” he rasped, blinking up at the stars. “I can handle it. The killing. I can be stronger.”

“You sure?”

 _No._ “Yes,” he said, squeezing tighter. “You need to do it. I just need to accept that. I can do it. I’m sure I can.”

He wasn’t sure in the slightest. But he knew he wanted to try, for Bart’s sake. He relied on her- more than that, he loved her, as much as he’d ever been allowed to love anything. He wasn’t ready to let her go. He nodded again. “Yes. I can.”

She grinned at him with grimy teeth, and he knew he’d made the right decision.

He could do this. All he had to do was… stop caring so much. Stop caring _at all_ , if possible. How hard could that be? The doctors at Blackwing always did say his emotions got the better of him- so toning them down could only be a good thing, right? It would be hard work, and it may take a long time, but he could do it. He had to.

He sighed. Closed his eyes, grounded himself in Bart’s steadying touch. Such rough, rough hands- hopefully he could train his skin to be so thick.

He delved into his mind, and starting shutting doors.

* * *

**2017**

“Huh.”

Svlad turns to Bart at the sound, raising his eyebrow. “Is this it?”

“Yeah,” she nods, hammering the brakes. “Yeah, this… this is somethin’, alright.”

Svlad nods too, climbing out of the car with her. He can't feel it, the invisible signal of the universe telling her there's work to be done. But he can remember what it felt like when he used to get the hunches. Before years of ignoring them to follow Bart, of delving into his mind and hacking mercilessly away at the surplus had silenced them, apparently for good. He’d silenced a lot of things that way. She's restless, tense and coiled for action as the thread between her and her target grows taut as a bowstring. A piranha in the stream of creation.

He sees the moment she makes the connection. Sees her head tilt in acknowledgement, a silent ‘oh, look, it’s you. I’ve been waiting for you.’ Sees her small, hard-skinned hands reach for the first thing they find- in this case, the heavy stone on the floor by her feet.

Sees her pounce, stone in hand, and smash and smash and _smash_ until there's nothing left. No pulse, no screams, no signal. Another bad thread snipped.

And he feels nothing.

She turns to him with a blood-spattered smile, wiping her face on her sleeve. “’Kay, I’m done.”

Svlad comes to stand beside her and cocks his head. “You don’t think it would’ve been a _tad_ quicker to use the machete?”

“Eh. Didn’t pan out that way.” She looks up at him, all droopy eyes and innocence now the job was done. “Let’s go. I’m starving.”

His eyes stay on the body a moment. Linger on the blood and the disfigured mass that used to be a face. He vaguely remembers a time it would have made him sick to his stomach with terror and guilt.

He doesn't have room for those sorts of things anymore. Not for the likes of the people she kills. Come to think of it, he doesn't really have room for _anything_ anymore. He holds out his hand for the car keys.

Bart stares at him like he's lost what's left of his mind. "No way. If anything's gonna take me out, it's gonna be you drivin’."

He smiles, her gravelly mocking unfolding a familiar warmth in his chest.

Alright. So maybe he has room for _something._

* * *

**Scenario 3: Project Icarus**

**2001**

_**Dirk stumbles right out of the gate, and is immediately recaptured.** _

_**Weeks pass, the facility is quieter than usual, the door never opens. He starts going a little mad with anxiety at being locked up so long, his only human contact the snippets of conversation he sometimes hears through the door. Riggins is there, and he’s being shouted at. He hears things about breaches, and failure to recapture, and gross incompetence.** _

_**Eventually, he hears a scream from a neighbouring cell. And another one. Riggins comes in with a gun. The project’s been shut down, and they’re under orders to tie up loose ends. He shoots.** _

_**Present day: Blackwing is dead, the building abandoned. All that remains are the symbols on the doors, Icarus hidden under dirt.** _

* * *

**Scenario 4: Dirk Gently**

**2001**

_**His strength and faith carry him through, and he makes the sprint from Blackwing without any stumbles. He escapes alone into the world. With no one to follow, he puts his trust in his instincts and the universe, hoping for the best.** _

_**Present day: Dirk is trapped in a closet with Todd, their backs against the door as an angry man with a cricket bat tries to bash it in. Dirk muses on how they always seem to find themselves in these situations. Todd asks how the hell they’re gonna get out of this one. Dirk says confidently that they will- it’s them, after all. Nothing can keep Dirk and Todd down. When the door finally buckles he grabs Todd's hand with a manic grin, and tells him to run.  
** _


End file.
